One of the quickest ways to get started with Ruby on Rails is with Instant Rails. Instant RoR version 1.7 is now available (see v1.7 release notes).

The first package I tried was v1.3, and I was impressed with how easy it was to download, unzip, and get Ruby, PHP, mySQL, and Apache up and running. In addition to the great new Ruby tools, you get PHP, mySQL, and phpMyAdmin in the install package, because that is the quickest way to configure an OpenSource management tool for your mySQL databases.

Includes Mongrel 1.0.1 support.

Very cool. Highly recommended.